Why I Made a Photography Quarterly
And Why You Might Want To
I help photographers and creative entrepreneurs over 40 reclaim their confidence, cut through the noise, and build bold, independent lives through no-BS insight, experience, and action. Welcome to my Substack. I am glad you are here.
I decided to make quarterly publications again. This is my first in a while.
This spring, I began noticing that too many of my ideas were vanishing into the digital ether. Articles written, photos published, conversations had… and then poof, buried under the next scroll, the next algorithm, the next shiny penny.
So I made a book.
Well, not a book-book, but a 44-page PDF called Quarterly: Volume One—a seasonal collection of words and images from my creative life over the last few months. Nothing too precious. Just a deliberate pause, a place to gather the work before it slips off to that corner where the lost socks live.
There’s a winter walk through Bryce Canyon, some ruminations on the creative rut we call the “Dead Horse Theory,” a few photographs of quiet trees and tangled brush, and some commentary on where photography might be headed (and where it shouldn’t go).
It’s a mix of stories, essays, and visual observations—pieces that ran on Substack and Medium, alongside images that haven’t been seen anywhere else. The tone ranges from contemplative to irreverent, and it’s 100% me: no fluff, no filler, just the stuff that felt worth saving.
But there’s a bigger point:
This isn’t just about photos and words.
It’s about creating a rhythm.
Creating a way to mark time and progress in a world that moves too fast.
As creatives, we spend a lot of time producing and very little time reflecting. A quarterly starts to give shape to the blur. It becomes a checkpoint, a way of saying, “Yes, I made something, and yes, it mattered. At least to me.”
You don’t need a fancy layout or a perfect portfolio to do this. Start with what you already have: a few images, a couple of notes, a quote you jotted down in the margin of a notebook.
Put it together.
Call it Volume One.
Print it.
Share it.
Or just keep it for yourself.
I’ll be making these every quarter now. It keeps me honest. It reminds me that the creative process isn’t just about the next thing—it’s also about honoring the last thing.
If you’d like to see Quarterly: Volume One, it’s yours. Free. No pitch, no funnel, no catch. Just something real in a world that could use more of that.
👉 Download below.
And if you do end up making one of your own, I’d love to see it. Tag me, email me, smoke signal me. Do not use a pigeon, we have a lovely, always hungry hawk out here at the ranch. Let’s bring a little more permanence to all this creative impermanence.
If you’re over 40 and still hungry to make, build, and create, stick around. This space is for people who aren’t done yet (and never will be). I’ve got five decades of wins, failures, comebacks, and creative battles under my belt, and I’m sharing everything that still works—and burning the rest.
No fluff.
No hustle porn.
Just real tools for building a creative life on your own damn terms.
Feels like a great idea. I find the constant create-post-andit'sgonealready-repeat cycle of social media to be truly draining, and the non-permanence of it all to be demoralizing. Working on a zine which builds on the fact that I seem to photograph trees a lot. It feels good to have a goal of making something more lasting out of that body of work.
Great idea.